Battle of the Week is a program designed to allow the users of Smogon to pick and choose which battles they want to see. If you've been unable to watch battles between top players because they choose to play on a deserted server or at the wrong times, this is your chance to watch an elite battle as it is played. If you still can't be on, you will get to watch the battlers go head to head at a later date by watching it on the Smogon YouTube Channel, because all battles in this program will be recorded and uploaded there. Additionally, The Smog plans to deliver insightful and interesting information about the battle and the battlers themselves.

How the Battle of the Week will work

This season there are three stages to the process.

Metagame Selection Stage: Users will be able to post whichever metagames they would like to see played, and the most popular choice after 24 hours is the one that will be used. Example metagames: DPP OU, ADV OU, RBY UU, VGC 2011.

Nominations Stage: Users will be able to submit nominations by posting up to three other Smogoners in the thread. Note that this means you cannot nominate yourself. To be eligible, the nominee must meet the following simple criteria:
- must have an account on Smogon that has been online sometime during the last week
- must not be on the [jump=listofpeople]list of users that don't want to or can't participate in the Battle of the Week[/jump]

If one of these conditions are not met but you think a nomination should be permitted, PM or otherwise contact me with reasons why. This stage will also last 24 hours.

Final Poll: The nominations will be counted, and the top ten most nominated players will be placed into a poll where everyone will be able to vote for any number of players in the pool. The two players that receives the most votes after 24 hours will be the battlers in the battle of the week. You may vote for yourself in this stage, unlike last year.

The battle will be scheduled, completed and recorded, and then the process will be repeated, with the program lasting for around ten 'weeks'.

The videos and logs for this week's battles should be up shortly, I'll leave this thread as a sticky until then. I hope everyone enjoyed this season, and if you have any feedback or comments, go ahead and post it here.

All of the logs are up on site now thanks to Kevin Garrett and I, and the first Smog Article for this season is now up thanks to Eo Ut Mortus and the crew at The Smog. Nastyjungle has been doing the art you can see in the first 4-5 logs and in the article in The Smog, thanks very much for that! Thanks to the recorders (locopoke / symphonyx64 / StevenSnype) for getting the videos on YouTube quickly as well. I can't promise that there will be any more articles in The Smog for the other battles in the season, but there may be.